Poll: Romney breaks away in Iowa

The day after Mitt Romney opened the door to another possible presidential run, a new poll shows he has a huge lead among likely 2016 Iowa Republican caucus voters.

According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Wednesday, 35 percent of likely GOP caucus voters would vote for the 2012 GOP nominee in 2016. When Romney’s name was added to the pool, no other candidate received double-digit votes.

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'Circumstances can change'

The survey comes as rumors have begun to swirl about a potential Romney bid for president in 2016. After months of insisting that he will not run again, the former Massachusetts governor on Tuesday acknowledged that “circumstances can change.”

“Circumstances can change, but I’m just not going to let my head go there,” he said during an interview on the “The Hugh Hewitt Show” radio program.

In Wednesday’s survey of 170 likely caucus voters, 9 percent said they would vote for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, putting him in a distant second to Romney. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum both came in third at 6 percent, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul tied for fifth with 5 percent.

Ten percent of likely voters said they were undecided.

In a field survey that did not include Romney, Huckabee scored 13 percent of the vote and Christie 10 percent, with 17 percent of voters saying they were undecided.

A June survey reported that Romney also had a double-digit lead over all listed potential Republican presidential contenders in New Hampshire, suggesting he has strong support in each of the first two presidential nominating contests.

In addition to losing to President Barack Obama in the 2012 general election, Romney unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination in 2008. Before Tuesday, he had said several times that he wants to give other Republican contenders a chance in 2016.

The survey was conducted Aug. 23-26 on landlines and cellphones. The margin of error for the 500-person general election survey was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points; there was no listed margin of error for the smaller selection of likely Republican caucus voters.

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll released Wednesday reveals that Republicans are giving more thought to the midterm elections coming in November.

Forty-two percent of Republicans answered that they have given “quite a lot” or “some” thought to the upcoming election — an increase from the 37 percent who answered similarly in April — while only 27 percent of Democrats showed the same amount of engagement. In April, 13 percent more Republicans answered that they were giving midterms “quite a lot” or “some” thought, and by August the gap has increased to 15 percent.